Appearing on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Barak Barfi, spokesman for the family of beheaded journalist Steven Sotloff, ripped the Obama administration over it's handling of the kidnapping of Sotloff and fellow journalist James Foley by ISIS terrorists: "We never really believed that the administration was doing anything to help us.
We had very, very limited contact with senior officials..."
Moments later, Barfi accused the White House of intimidating the families of the hostages: "The families sat with this National Security Council official and basically he bullied and hectored them and they were scared....I sat in other meetings with mid-level State Department officials and the FBI and I basically heard the same thing."
Co-host Norah O'Donnell followed up: "This is a serious charge because you're saying that someone within the National Security Council bullied and hectored the Sotloff family, is that correct?" Barfi reiterated:
That's basically what happened. The Sotloff's feel this. And I'm hearing that [White House chief of staff] Denis McDonough saying they weren't threatened. He wasn't in the meetings. John Kerry wasn't in the meetings. The family was in the meetings and then I was in a subsequent meeting, and I know what I heard.
O'Donnell replied: "Why would the White House do that to a family?" Barfi explained: "We don't know. We don't have a view into the White House. We didn't have a very good relationship with the administration....we don't know what the administration's policy was on this."
NBC and ABC have failed to notice the Sotloff and Foley families criticizing the White House.
On September 9, Barfi appeared on CNN's AC 360 and told host Anderson Cooper: "We know that the intelligence community and the White House are enmeshed in the larger game of bureaucratic infighting and Jim and Steve are pawns in that game..."
CBS This Morning covered Barfi's remarks the next morning, while NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America skipped the story.
On September 12, This Morning covered another CNN interview with Foley's mother, who denounced the Obama administration's "appalling" response to her son's kidnapping.
Again, NBC and ABC were silent on the matter.